galactic_cruciblesfandomcom-20200215-history
User blog:TheReturnOfTheKing/A new world
So, I have an idea for a new planet. Actually, to be more precise, I have several ideas, but I made a page for one of them. I think that was a bit hasty of me. In fact, maybe someone could delete that, please? Thank you. The temporarily-named Flambe is based on one of the worlds created by Chris Wayan as part of Planetocopia. (Don't even bother with the rest of the site. It's… I don't even know.) The worlds of Planetocopia are really well thought-out and detailed, aside from the residents, which are a bit idealistic and utopian. I was just thinking, what if I could come up with a spread of worlds like that, except without the strange furries? Then, I looked at my history and decided to be honest with myself - what if I could come up with a single worlds inspired by or related to the concepts in Planetocopia, except without the strange furries? So, the thought I decided to run with was a tribute to Caprica, an idea quite unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's a hot, fairly dry world with massive areas of exposed seafloor offering fascinating opportunities for life in all shapes and sizes. However, it's not the only idea I had. Two other possibilities captured my imagination: a giant, largely water-covered world with a surprisingly great land area, like Lyr; or a freezing but not frozen super-Titan with ethane replacing water, like Xanadu. However, another collection of worlds unrelated to Planetocopia has also captured my imagination. The worlds of Aurelia and Blue Moon, subjects of a two-part documentary mini-series on the National Geographic Channel (titled Alien Worlds in it's U.K. broadcast and Extraterrestrial in the States) were two worlds that set my imagination on fire. In fact, Blue Moon was one of the primary inspirations for Skyridge. Aurelia is a swampy, tidally-locked planet that orbits a red dwarf (an eyeball world, basically) and Blue Moon is a small moon of a gas giant with a dense atmosphere and abundant forests. I had an idea for a tribute to them - essentially, combine them into a single planet (an eyeball world with a dense atmosphere and low gravity) and see what happens. However, another part of my brain doesn't want to do a tribute. After all, Galactic Crucibles is no encyclopedia of an existing idea or fanfic of a pre-made universe. GC is it's own universe, a place where the imagination may run wild with ideas unlike anything humankind has seen before. Therefore, I wonder if this new world should be it's own world, something which isn't a salute to something someone else did some time ago? I'd like to do something unique and unusual, something unlike old Earth. Therefore, I figured I could make an inhabited gas giant. Of course, inhabited gas giants are a highly speculative idea, and I want it to be scientifically plausible. A rogue planet, adrift in the darkness of space, an orphan with no parent star to watch over it and give it light? In fact, could we get more abstract? Perhaps this could be a world where life is based on silicon, or metal? Does it even need to be a planet? What about an asteroid, or even a star? Could photon-based life exist on the event horizon of black holes? What if life could exist with no home, floating amongst the stars like fish or whales through our seas? Before I go off on a wild tangent, maybe I should take another look at the ideas I already have, see if any of them are worth devoting time to. Flambé/Caprica world Capsica-1.jpg|A map of Capsica, the inspiration for this concept.|link=http://www.worlddreambank.org/C/CAP.HTM Desert_planet.jpg|Your standard stereotypical desert planet. frigginPANDORAAAAAAA =D.jpg|In sheer epicness, you can't really beat the jungles of Pandora. mustafar-is-hell.jpg|Looks pretty, but I wouldn't want to live there... Generally, in sci-fi, a hot planet offers two possibilities - big desert or big jungle. Three if you don't mind having your world be a largely uninhabitable volcanic hellhole (*cough* Mustafar *cough*). Well, not exactly uninhabitable, but hard to inhabit, at least for carbon-based life. The idea behind Caprica is somewhere between Sahara-world and Amazon-world, and it's like no world I've ever seen before. Though it's fairly dry, there are still oceans. large portions of them have dried, exposing vast areas of seafloor. Seafloor rifts are in the open air and the conventional continents are "cold," largely uninhabited highlands while life proliferates in the high air pressure and warmth of the lowlands. Meanwhile, Hawaii-like shield volcanoes tower, dwarfing Everest and reaching into the sky like islands of low air pressure which contain life found nowhere else in the world. As far as I know, Caprica is the only one of it's kind dreamed up by humanity. This situation must be rectified. That's probably why I already made a page for this idea - because it's damn cool :D However, why not go a step or two further in making this a really unique world? Let's make it just a wee bit drier, have that water evaporate a tad more, though not enough to cause a Venus crisis. Even more seafloor gets exposed and the oceans are reduced to spidery inland seas. There'd be plenty of deserts, but I could see there being some cool areas of low pressure where the ocean floor used to be and water vapour could pool there, creating awesome mega-jungles which could grow to as much as a mile high (and yes, I'm basically ripping off the Pagoda trees of Blue Moon). Or what about the same idea as Capsica, but with dense, water-laden air and oceans of clouds? Suppose there are areas where it rains quite literally all the time? And if the clouds are oceans, could there be something swimming through them? It doesn't have to be like that, I'm just spitballing, but just, take the idea of a world that's too hot and do something with it that hasn't been done before. Lyr-inspired super-Earth Lyr-1.jpg|Lyr, another source of inspiration from Planetocopia.|link=http://www.worlddreambank.org/L/LYR.HTM high_grav_world.jpeg|The most imaginative super-Earth sci-fi has come up with :( In our ongoing search for life out there, we've been hunting for planets like our own Earth, planets not too close to a star but not too far and roughly the size of our beloved blue marble. In doing so, we may have been ignoring countless inhabited worlds, even when we've found exactly what we were looking for. Giant terrestrial planets, from 2 to 10 times the mass of Earth, are generally ignored by both science and popular culture, dismissed as giant ocean or swamp worlds with low-slung or slug-like inhabitants unlikely to amount to anything interesting. Well, though these worlds are likely to be predominantly ocean, due to their greater surface area, they actually have more total land than Earth! And as for the high gravity issue, look at Saturn. It's the second-largest planet in the solar system, but if it had a surface, you could stand on it without any issue. It's not a matter of size or mass, but of density! In all honesty, big worlds get bad rap. Generally, I prefer low-grav worlds, as they seem to offer more interesting possibilities. However, Lyr changed my mind on the matter, and now I'm very interested in seeing the potential of a large world. I mean, something like Lyr, but without… well… that. And the original world has a moon system comparable to some of it's larger gaseous cousins, even boasting an inhabited partner in space. I mean, you could make this planet, and then have people! on another world! orbiting it! And that creates some fascinating possibilities - what happens if the inhabitants of one of these celestial neighbours develops spaceflight more rapidly than the denizens of the other, and their first giant leap ends up crushing some innocent natives underfoot. (I'm looking at you, Columbus. Aaaaaand maybe ripping you off, James Cameron. Oh, by the way, Chris, you suck and you didn't discover America.) Titanic Titan xanadu-pic.jpg|A map of Xanadu, more Planetocopian weirdness.|link=http://www.worlddreambank.org/X/XAN.HTM titan-moon.jpg|Titan, that disappointing little moon which started it all. coldoutthere.jpg|Most ice worlds in sci-fi tend to resemble this. Blue (or maybe green? Red?) Aurelia Inhabited gas giant Orphaned world Silicon- or metal-based life world Asteroid Star Black hole Free-floating space life Update I'm probably not gonna finish this post, as I'm not terribly interested in most of the remaining ideas. I'll start a new post to do a bit more brainstorming. Category:Blog posts